Have you ever made a batch of kimchi or kraut that just came out too salty? Maybe you changed measuring spoons, switched brands of salt or followed a new recipe written by someone who just doesn’t share your taste preferences. That always bums me out. There are ways to avoid it (always use the same salt and weigh rather than measure, never switch measuring spoons, etc), but sometimes it just happens. It’s not the end of the world, either. Most overly salted things can be served in small portions with larger portions of unsalted food (rice/grains, salad, eggs, etc) and you’ll never notice. You can also mix in some fresh (unsalted) veggies and let it ferment for another few days to a week. The texture will be uneven, but the saltiness will be diminished.

My new favorite thing to do with over-salted ferments is to turn them into seasoning. Lots of people dehydrate their fermented vegetables and you can get a nice crispy snack out of them that way. There are a couple things I don’t love about dehydrated ferments, though. First, and this may just be a personal thing, I would rather just eat my ferments hydrated most of the time, so it’s not really worth the effort for me. Secondly, the vegetables are incredibly salty once you’ve sucked out the balancing and bulking water element. That’s actually what gave me this idea. If they’re already going to be salty, why not use them as you would salt?

Space the fermented vegetables evenly on the dehydrator trays and try to keep like sized pieces on the same tray when possible.

I definitely do this with ferments that have a perfect salt level. It’s still fun and definitely still tasty. It also works well for ferments that have gone a bit soft in the back of the fridge. My very favorite version of this is the one pictured; the one I make with pesto-chi. But there are no bad choices here. Krauts of all kinds, kimchis and pickles of all varieties lend themselves to this process.

If you dehydrate below 110°F (43.3° C), you’ll keep the probiotic bacteria alive (although they won’t be active until the have access to some liquid again). If not, you’ll just be making something super tasty to sprinkle over pasta and soup or use as a meat rub.

For two whole weeks, we’ve talked about one thing: Tartine Bread (Gluten-Free and Paleo friends, no worries! We haven’t become a full gluten blog! We’re still a full fermentation blog!). Still, believe it or not, we’ve only scratched the surface of the goodness that is Tartine Bread. I recommend that you buy the book, or at least, that you grab a copy of it from your local library. It’s worth it. The photos are excellent, the instructions and details are fascinating and the fermentation information is rock solid.

Fermentation makes dough bubbles!

One of you, though, can win it here! Just use the Rafflecopter below to win a copy. Continental US only. Contest ends Monday, March 9th at 11:59pm EST.

Good luck and please let me know in the comments how you’re doing on each step of this process. The links to every step are at the bottom of this post.

Equipment needed for the actual baking (finally) of the Tartine Bread Country Bread:

Cast iron combo cooker or dutch oven

Very thick oven mitts or hot pads (seriously. THESE PANS ARE HOT. DO NOT TOUCH THEM WITHOUT SERIOUS HEAT PROTECTION OR YOU WILL BURN YOURSELF INTO PAINFUL KINDS OF PAIN)

Leftover rice flour/wheat flour mix

Clean kitchen shears or a razor

A place to cool your bread

You’ve let your bread rise at a slowed rate in the fridge for 10ish (and up to 12) hours, so that means you’re ready to score and bake it. Pull one of the dough balls out of the fridge and lightly sprinkle it with with some of the remaining rice flour mixture from yesterday. Place your cast iron cooker (both pieces) in the oven and heat it to 500°F. I have a thermometer in my oven, so I know that when my oven says pre-heating is over, it’s lying. Let the oven (and the cast iron cooker) heat for 20 minutes before you move on to the next step, even if your oven tells you it’s ready earlier.

Try cutting with a blade and a pair of scissors to see what works for youScoring the bread with kitchen shears does an imperfect job, but it’s easier than dealing with a razor blade.

Scoring dough for people who are terrible at scoring dough

Using very thick oven mitts, pull the shallow piece (skillet) only of the cast iron cooker out of the oven and place it on your stove. Invert the dough into the skillet. Now is the time to score your loaf. I am also terrible at this. A lame (a scoring tool that literally translates to “blade”) or straight razor is the tool of choice for experienced bakers, but I always end up butchering the surface with a straight razor, so I usually use kitchen shears to snip 4 shallow cuts, one on each “side” of the circular loaf. As you can see, I don’t do either method particularly well, but man, are these breads beautiful. You have two loaves to play with, so you can try a different way with each. Scoring is really important because it lets the bread “vent.” If you don’t score, your loaf won’t bake up beautifully and you may get a loaf that cracks a big ol’ crater somewhere else. Work quickly so that you can get that hot pan and bread back in the oven ASAP.

After 20 minutes, remove the “lid” and put your half-baked loaf back in the oven to brown and crisp

Let me give it to you straight. I SUCK at shaping bread loaves. Chad Robertson provides excellent instructions and photos in Tartine Bread, but handy-ness skipped a generation I’m just bad at it. You know what, though? It’s fine. These loaves are so good, you can be the worst shaper ever (oh, I also suck at scoring, and that also doesn’t matter) and still end up with something that you want to take home to mom and dad. Still, you gotta try, right? So here’s what we’re doing, now that you dough has gone through bulk fermentation and it’s looking smooth as silk, we’re going to divide, shape and let it rise.

Divide

One cut, right down the middle.

Gently pull your dough out onto a large, clean, smooth, unfloured surface (I use a big cutting board). It should pull away from the sides and bottom of the container easily and in 1 large piece. If you have a bench scraper, you can use it to divide your dough blob into two, roughly even halves. If you don’t (I don’t, and it’s fine), use a large, chef’s knife. Just press straight down in one, decisive stroke until the blade hits the board, and hold the knife there with one hand while pulling the other half away, supporting it from the bottom. Pull it apart until you have two, separate dough blobs. Lightly sprinkle the top of the blobs with flour mixture.

My version of the first shaping. Not a ton of surface tension, but it still gives glorious bread.

Gather one blob up, working quickly and not pulling at it or pushing at, just gently scooping, flip it, so that the floured side is now down on the cutting board. Repeat with the other blob, moving it to the second work area as you flip. Your goal right now is to create the right shape while not mixing any more flour into the dough, so don’t go kneading or working the dough. Take your misshapen dough piece by the cut edge, and tuck that under. You don’t want any of the newly added flour getting in to the dough, if you can avoid it.

Shape

1st Shaping: Roberston has great instructions for folding your dough ball under around the edges, using a bench scraper and your hands, to create surface tension and a nice, smooth ball of dough. I just use my hands, and I kind of pull left with my left hand while tucking with my right hand as the dough ball rotates. It gets you to a pretty smooth ball. Once you’ve got a ball, set it aside, sprinkle it with flour mixture and cover it with a clean kitchen towel. Repeat with the other dough ball. Let it rest for a half hour.

The dough could be a little bit flatter than it is here before beginning final shaping. Note the edges are rounded. That’s a good thing.

Final shaping: when you come back, your dough will have flattened out a bit. The edges should still be rounded. If they’re flat or if the dough is way spread out and shapeless, that may mean you didn’t turn enough during bulk fermentation. In any case, the fix is to reshape it how you just did (pulling with left hand, tucking with right) and letting it sit for another 30 to 40 minutes before moving on.

North, east, west, south and a flip!

If it looks right, you’re ready for the final shape. Gather the dough ball in your hands and quickly flip it, so that the flour side is down on your surface. (I like to gather it by getting as much in my hands as possible without actually pulling on it. Then, when I know I’ve got a good handle, I pull it all up at once, so the part touching/slightly sticking to the cutting board and then turn it and lightly place the floured side down.)

For this whole folding process, you want to be gentle. Don’t push too hard because you want to keep the CO2 that was created during fermentation trapped in the dough. Without it, you’ll have some flat loaves.

Picture it as a compass, with South being near your belly. Working quickly, pull the south side towards you, then fold it back up over as if you’re folding a piece of paper into thirds. Hold it there with a finger, then grab the right side of the dough (east on your compass) and fold that over, just as you did with the previous fold. Then do the same with the left side (west) and finally, take the edge furthest from you (north) and fold it almost all the way down to the edge closest to you. Lightly press it in, the flip the whole thing over and cup your hands around the sides of the dough, gently tucking it under to form a ball.

Ready to head into the bowl for final rise.

Grab 2 bowls, each big enough to fit a dough ball with a few inches of headspace at the top. Lay a clean kitchen towel tautly across the top and dust it with flour mixture. Brush off any excess and press it into the bowl. Repeat with the other bowl. Invert each loaf into a bowl, smooth side down. Pull the protruding sides of the towel up and gently place them on top of the loaves. Put the bowls in the fridge. Allow it to chill there for 10 to 12 hours. The final rise will happen while you go about your business.

You made your leaven? You put it in a glass of water and it floated for a while? Cool! We’re ready to go then. First up in Tartine Bread is a step that’s likely much easier than what you’ve done in the past. No stand mixer. No elbow grease, just some light hand-mixing to start.

Using your (very clean) hands, dissolve the leaven into the first 700 grams of water in a large bowl. Add both flours, and mix with your hands until all the flour is absorbed. This will be a very shaggy, dryish dough and you might think you’ve messed it up because the flour doesn’t seem to be quite fully in there. Just do the best you possibly can, and work out any lumps. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula and scrape any excess dough off of your hands and back into the mix.

Set the dough aside at room temp for 25 to 40 minutes. (Don’t skip this!) Add the salt and the remaining 50 g of 80°F water and squeeze the dough through your fingers to incorporate the salt. Take advantage of the addition of water, to mix in any little dry bits that didn’t quite get in there cohesively the first time. It’s totally fine for little pieces to break off while you’re squeezing. Just mix them back in and they reintegrate themselves.

After squeezing this way for a couple minutes, the salt should be incorporated, and the dough should pull together pretty easily.

A finished dough will have a smooth surface, bubbles throughout (check the sides and bottom of your container). It should feel silky to the touch and be light in texture, especially compared to the thick, dense dough that you first put it in the bowl.

Bulk Fermentation

Pull the dough together into a cohesive mass and move it into a thick glass bowl or thick plastic container. Cover the container with a cloth. The goal here is to insulate it fairly well so it maintains temperature. This is the bulk rise, and if you’re doing it the way I do, it will take about 12 hours. For the first 2 to 3 hours, you’ll want to “turn” the bread every 30 to 45 minutes. Do this by sticking a water-dampened hand along the side of the container down to the bottom. Gently grab the dough at the bottom of the container and pull it up and over the top of the surface dough. Do this so that in each “turn” you’ve flipped the dough from top to bottom. If you’re around and awake for the remaining 9 hours of fermentation, you can repeat this process ever hour or hour and a half. I usually do this part overnight, or while I’m at work, so I just do a few turns in the first few hours, as described, and then do another (EXTREMELY GENTLE) turn or two in the last 2 t0 3 hours before the next step.

During bulk fermentation, you’ll see bubbles develop around the sides of the container, and the dough itself will expand, smooth out, and in Robertson’s perfect words, become more “billowy.” During your last turn, the dough should pull away from the sides of the container with ease. It should be lighter and silkier. Don’t press it too much or you’ll push out the gas that will later make your bread rise beautifully. Just gently turn the dough onto itself without compressing it and you’ll be alright.

At hour 10 or 12, you notice all of the above descriptors in your dough, and you’ll know it’s time to divide and shape. Those, my friends, are tricks for tomorrow!

Before we bake Tartine’s wonderful Country Loaf, we have to make our leaven. The leaven is the stuff that’s going to officially go into your loaves to make them rise. In other words, it’s your yeast.

Making the leaven is pretty similar to what you’ve been doing for the past week during feedings, only the proportions are going to be different and more precise here and you’re going to let it ferment for a shorter period of time.

To bake this particular loaf, you’re going to need to do some scheduling before you make your leaven. Remember at the beginning when I told you that Robertson simplifies sourdough starter? That is true. The process for actually baking the bread is another story, however. If you’re new to baking, or if you’re used to baking “normal” loaves at home, this is going to significantly step up your game. For me, this process works best when I plan it for 2 nights and 1 day, or 2 days and 1 night. Here is an example of how it might work, followed by a shorter scheduling option if you’re doing this on a weekend day. This is for theoretical planning purposes only, you can choose to start this process any time you like. I sometimes make the leaven in the am and begin bulk fermentation in the evening.

Scrape as much leaven off your fingers as you can after mixing, and clean up the sides of your bowl.

Extended Fermentation/Rising

Monday Night

Mix leaven (10 minutes)

Let leaven ferment before preparing dough (8 to 10 hours)

Tuesday Morning

Mixing the Dough (10 minutes)

Let dough rest (20 to 45 minutes)

Tuesday all day

Bulk fermentation and turning (10 to 12 hours) depending on temperature between 55°F and 65°F. You will need to periodically put your hands on the dough, so plan to be around for the first couple hours and the last hour of fermentation.

Tuesday Evening

Dividing and Shaping (45 minutes including resting time and final shaping)

Tuesday Overnight

Final Rise (8 to 12 hours in the fridge)

Wednesday Morning

Heating the oven, scoring and baking (1 hour)

Cooling (2 to 4 hours)

In other words, this can really stretch out. Make sure you’ll have free time/will not be at work when it’s time to move on to the next step. Doing a long bulk fermentation and a long final rise mean that the process takes longer overall, but it will also mean that you don’t have to wait until the weekend to get a baked loaf, provided you’re an early riser. If you want to go for shorter fermentation times, you’ll need to be near your dough at more regular intervals, so if you have a 9 to 5 workday, just keep feeding your sourdough as you have been until Friday and then start this process as above.

Shorter Fermentation/Rising (italics denotes difference from above)

Monday Night

Mix leaven (10 minutes)

Let leaven ferment before preparing dough (8 to 10 hours)

Tuesday Morning

Mixing the Dough (10 minutes)

Let dough rest (20 to 45 minutes)

Bulk fermentation and turning (3 to 4 hours at 78°F to 82°F). You’ll need to be around for this period of time.

Tuesday Afternoon

Dividing and Shaping (45 minutes, including resting time and final shaping)

Final Rise (2 to 3 hours at 75°F to 80°F)

Tuesday Evening

Heating the oven, scoring and baking: 1 hour

Cooling: 2 hours

This may seem like a lot of work. Most of it is just waiting (something we, the fermenters, are well-versed in). The first time is the most complicated, because there are things to learn and because you had to actually establish your sourdough starter from scratch first (in the future, you’ll just be pulling it out the fridge, feeding it for a day or two and then going to town). Just know that this is very likely to be the best homemade bread you’ve ever tasted, and that it will also be WAY better than the majority of bread you can buy even at nice bakeries. So stick with it, and definitely buy a copy of Tartine Bread.

Nothing left to do but scrape down the sides of the bowl, cover and set aside for 10 hours.